Custom built or branded computers for your business

For years there has been an on-going debate within businesses when it comes to buying new computers or replacing old ones; Proprietary or Bespoke? As a company that has been in operation for nearly 20 years, and over the years has sold hundreds of computers to our clients, we started in the early days selling predominantly Dell and Hewlett Packard computers. Although we still do sell branded PCs to our clients, we have since preferred to build custom computers, and here is why:

We prefer the quality of bespoke machines, solely because we can pick and choose the components going into the computer. Generally, with a branded PC you don’t have to the option to select a Gigabit or MSI motherboard and depending on the make and model, you may get a motherboard that won’t compare to the aforementioned vendors when it comes to quality and performance. For each computer, we understand the client, their requirements, and which software they use, we can then tailor their computers to specific hardware such as external graphics card, DDR5 memory and SSD hard disk. Although branded machines offer variations in specification you won’t normally have the option to select specific makes and models of components.

Another huge benefit to having custom built PCs within your business is the ability and ease of replacing and upgrading parts. Manufactures of branded computers other a warranty but in the case of a component failing outside of the manufacturer warranty, it can be difficult and expensive to replace a part. We had many out of warranty branded machines that experienced motherboard and component failures. The replacement parts from the manufacturers were generally around five times more expensive than a similar non-branded part. The additional frustration comes in when a branded replacement part may take several weeks to be delivered whereas we normally receive custom components within 24 hours.

For clients that don’t wish to replace machines but merely upgrade what they have, we completed several projects for clients where we took their older machines (but still with decent base components), and added in a SSD hard disk along with the newer version of operating system and a memory upgrade. Needless to say, the lower upgrade price coupled with a huge increase in PC performance has always been met with numerous smiling faces, from both the budget holders and the staff using them.

Custom built computers, because we build them ourselves and choose which components we require, do not come pre-built and installed with a barrage of manufacturer software, most of which is not used or required and can take up valuable resources. We prefer to build a clean machine from scratch and only install the software that we want on the machine.

For many, a branded computer for the office is the way forward, and we will of course honour that for the clients that share this viewpoint, however we still prefer to build our own computers, and from these hundreds of computers that we have built and installed into our clients’ networks, the problems associated with them are practically non-existent.

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